Thorium Wars Review

DSiWare's first 10 dollar download proves to be mostly unworthy of its asking price.

Up until yesterday, the downloadable games and applications on sale in Nintendo's DSi Shop were separated into four distinct pricing categories -- free, 200 Points, 500 Points and 800+. That plus sign on the end of the 800 was mostly for show, though, as no game offered under that banner cost more than eight bucks. Until yesterday. Yesterday, Thorium Wars was released -- with a price tag of a whopping 1000 Points. DSiWare hit a new high.

The inflated asking price, though, doesn't seem to coincide with any equivalent increase in quality. As the first 10 dollar download for DSi, players might expect to get more for their money -- a fuller, richer experience with more content and excitement. They won't. I'm sure buyer's remorse is already settling in for those who were too quick to download it right away, as these Wars are some pretty mediocre conflicts indeed.

"Thorium" is the name given to an incredibly efficient and highly sought-after energy source, one mankind is happily using to further its advancement as a species. The scientists in this brave new futuristic vision of the world make a classic mistake, though, by developing Thorium-powered super robots to help in harvesting the stuff. The robots gain sentience, of course, and turn against their creators. Your basic man versus machine sci-fi plot, with a funny new element of the periodic table to blame.

Some later levels take you to more dramatic settings like out in space,but it's hard to stay very interested.

Thorium Wars, then, casts you as a brash human pilot taking control of mankind's fastest and most powerful jets, tanks and gunboats to lead the charge in attacking and destroying key fortresses and battalions in the robot army across land, sea and sky. An individual mission in Thorium Wars will present you with a basic victory condition like "defeat all enemies" or "destroy the marked beacons on your map" and then set you loose into a free-roaming 3D arena to get it done.

And that's pretty much it. You hop into your vehicle, you drive or fly or hover around shooting everything that's shooting at you, then you move right along to the next round to do it all again. Thorium Wars offers a bit of variance in each mission after you reach mid-level checkpoints, sometimes throwing new enemy types into the mix, or a boss character, or something else mildly different. But it's pretty much just drive and shoot.

The controls are passable, offering neither a perfectly fluid connection between you and your craft or an especially frustrating experience -- it's just an average setup with the expected array of options like Y-Axis flip for your crosshairs and the choice to go with either stylus input or an all-button scheme. What can be frustrating is the game's most common enemy type, a swarming, endlessly-regenerating horde of little drone robots that constantly hover around you all the time. Though the controls feel adequate enough for maneuvering and targeting most of the time, you'll certainly grow tired of trying to accurately target these gnat-like mini-bots constantly tagging you while drifting just ever-so-slightly out of your firing range.

And you may find, too, that your available equipment in this fight is just a bit limited. Most missions offer you a choice between different vehicles -- a sea battle will let you choose either the Osiris Hovercraft or Triton Gunboat, for example. Beyond varied ratings for speed and impact of each individual laser blast, though, the different choices feel a lot alike. There are no secondary bombs, no guided missiles. No special jumping maneuvers or cloaking devices or anything. These war machines are stock models with no options included. You'd think that humanity would be able to do a bit better when the survival of the species was on the line.

Thorium Wars rounds things out with an average effort across both graphics and sound, as well, continuing to walk the line between being notably good or notably bad. The visuals are functional, the style fair. But it's not really anything memorable. It's all just kind of there. On the fence. Middle of the road.

The Verdict

And that's Thorium Wars in the end -- average at best. This is the kind of game that you won't remember playing a year from now, because it's not exciting enough to make any real lasting positive impression, but it's also done just well enough that it shouldn't strike you as terribly negative either.

So what makes Thorium Wars not worth the investment, in the end, is the price itself -- a mediocre vehicular shooter might have been worth a look at a more reasonable rate, but mediocrity is certainly not worth the highest asking price yet in the DSi Shop. Save your 10 dollars and use them for another game that makes a more compelling case for them. Or two games, since this one's asking double what it should have.